Everything is Changing

Hi,

how was your week?

It feels like April ran so fast, and it is scary as hell. Yesterday I was making a March photo dump on my Instagram stories, and today, it is the 29th of April—a day to the end of the month. Does it feel the same way for you as well?

A recurring theme in my life right now is change. I think it’s exacerbated by the fact that April is my birth month, and I am getting older. Like I said in a previous newsletter, I am usually sensitive to new beginnings, so maybe I have been in my feelings. But I really believe that when Tame Impala sang, “Everything is changing, and there’s nothing I can do” in Apocalypse Dreams, they didn’t lie.

Everything is changing, and quickly, too.

I was recently cleaning out my digital gallery when I came across pictures from 2018 —2020. I realised there and then that I couldn’t recognize the person I was in those pictures. I knew I was looking at me—but I had a hard time connecting with who I used to be.

A few weeks before that, I had come across a journal I kept when I was 17. Browsing through it made me smile ruefully. The things I cared about then, that filled the pages of my journal were so real and important to my 17-year-old self. But I didn’t even remember some of them and how much they had affected me at the time. It was a nearly fictional recollection of memories, tethered only by the fact that I knew that the book was mine, and the handwriting was mine, and I could remember bits and pieces of what my life looked like back then.

It made me think about those timelapse videos on social media where people do funny experiments with coke and meat or try to grow a plant in their kitchen sink and how much the end result (whether positive or negative) always differs from the beginning.

In the same vein, I feel like a seed in a petri dish, constantly growing and changing. When I was younger, I loved writing fiction and creating fashion illustrations. I even considered going to design school. But now, I write newsletters and case studies, and it's been a while since I've drawn anything. What will my future look like? Will I lose the things I used to enjoy? Will I lose the people I cherish now as I did with my friends from when I was thirteen? I wonder what life will look like in 2027. Will I wake up in a foreign city where the language is not written in the Roman alphabet? Most importantly, will I ever learn to like mushrooms?

These thoughts are stress-inducing, and I am sorry if I have given you more things to worry about. But I think they provide a level of comfort as well. If everything is changing, that means there’s really no need to worry. It’s never that serious. The things that stress you today, like your Project supervisor and your Ex, and not having enough money, probably won’t matter a few years from now.

Life can get much better. Even if you lose everything by mistake or design, you can find new things and people to love and cherish. You can always reinvent yourself. Like an onion, you can peel back as many layers of yourself as you need to and grow new ones.

I always want to hold onto this when my problems feel so immediate and real.

Yes, everything is changing, and life is plagued with so much uncertainty, but there’s good news in that, too.

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Media I Consumed This Week

Watching: I am currently watching Bora!Deborah, a new K-drama, and I am still watching BEEF.

Listening: This week, I listened to a lot of Frank Ocean and Dominic Fike. Frank’s Novacane is a current obsession, and I love the Orange album in general. It is so good. Dominic Fike performed during Coachella, and honestly, I think he sounds amazing better live. He is so talented! As always, you can find them here.

Reading: I am just starting The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. I will tell you how I feel about it with time.